KODO-SHINTO

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 692, 18 November 1933, Page 6

KODO-SHINTO

DOCTRINE EXPLAINED BY MR. BURNARD SHAW SHOULD BE LAUGHED AT London, Oct. 13. Mr. Bernard S'haw attended a cocktail party yesterday. The news is not so shattering as it sounds, because, in pont of fact, he slipped away before the first tinkle of the ice was heard in the shaker. But he was indubitably there. He attended as a friend of Professor O'Conroy, whose book, "The Menace of Japan," published to-day by Messrs. Hurst and Blackett, was given the unusual send-off of an afternoon party at the Savoy. Professor O'Conroy's book is a stern indictment of what he describes as Japan's xnilitarist hysteria, the doctrine of Kodo-Shinto, which aims at Japanese predominaxxee in the East. Professor O'Conroy has been a teacher at Keio University for fifteen years, and adduced much evidence in support of his thesis. But Mx\ Shaw, in giving his blessing to the book, was careful to draw a wider moral. He said: " 'Kodo' is not the latest game— it is not even peculiar to Japan. In England we call it 'jingoism' if we do not like it, and Gmperial sentinxent' if we do. The German 'Kodo' is Hitlerisnx. "Hitler is right — perfectly right — in insisting that Germany is not to be plundered as she has been under the Treaty of Versailles. The only trouble with 'Kodo' in any of its forms is that if it does come to a fight it will mean the ruin of civilisation. "This does not concern me so much ■ — at most I have a few years to go, and I have done all the mischief that I can do. But to younger men it may be important that 'Kodo' should be checked. "The only thing that can hurt 'Kodo' is to laugh at it — it is our duty to laugh at and ridicule it every time it shows its head." Mr. Shaw concluded by remarking : "One advantage of going to the Far East is that you lose the absurd distinction of being a white man. The Chinese called me 'the Pink Man,' and nobody in England is really white. We have got to get rid of this idea that one kind of man is better than another."